Sex and the Staten Island Ferry
SATC Season 3 Premiere
Greetings friends and enemies! It is time for another season of Sex and the City as told by me. What are my qualifications? I have access to SATC episodes and I started this newsletter which means I’m in charge. So. There you go.
BUT FIRST: a quick correction! Drew pointed out that in my last newsletter I had a hilarious typo which meant Carrie’s quoting The Way We Were at Big came out as “Your girl is slovenly, Hubble” but it’s “Your girl is lovely, Hubble”. HAHAHAHA. Woops! I’m currently in the process of going through Autism/ADHD assessment and the psychologist pointed out how sometimes these little mistakes can be a sign of ADHD and I have been rethinking my entire life ever since. So. ANYWAYS……….
Episode 1: Where There’s Smoke
This is GREAT episode and a great season tbh. Yes, I know I’ve said that before (AND I’LL SAY IT AGAIN)!!!!!!
We open the gals on the Staten Island Ferry. As a minor NY celebrity (her words) Carrie has been invited to judge some fireman for a calendar. Charlotte is very cold. They could just…go inside the ferry? But Carrie has to smoke, so. As they get farther away from Manhattan, Miranda asks: “Who would’ve thought an island that small could hold all our ex-boyfriends?”. They sit in the silence of her profound insight.
This competition is hilarious! There’s 70s tunes blasting and John Slattery is there!!! He’s a politician campaigning for NYC Comptroller, which is a world I Google every time I hear it. He is flirting with Carrie when he should be looking at the men!!! Carrie says “watch the fireman” and he says “I’m more into cops”. RED FLAG.
Miranda and Charlotte bring Sam a Staten Island Iced Tea which has even more liquor than the Long Island one. Charlotte is like Miranda why do you even need to look at these men when you have Steve and she’s like oh we’re just friends and Sam goes “no WE’RE just friends, I don’t put my dick in you” and Miranda says after a few more of those drinks maybe she can and Sam laughs….until she turns around and notices a very “buff” fireman. I find him to be icky.
Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” is playing which is a fucking BANGER (as are all Donna Summer songs). The gals are dancing—Miranda has a very strange sense of rhythm. Carrie is wearing the perfect ensemble for such an occasion. Sam goes to hit on her fireman of choice and he is uh…..shall we say……Very Dumb. A Himbo, if you will.
Carrie is taking a dancing break at the bar when John Slattery emerges to Do Flirting. They smoke and banter. She says that he has terrible taste in men (based on his scores in the contest). He says she was very tough and gave a lot of half-points and she says “what can I say, sometimes a girl needs a half” and raises a brow in her signature SJP way and I don’t really get what the implication is?? It turns out that Carrie has never voted in NYC. She gives him her address and he tells her they’re in the same district. He asks for her phone number and she says she isn’t into dating right now and he goes “why, bad break up?” and then she is just silent for like…3 minutes? He then asks her out for dinner and she just laughs.
Cut to one of the best scenes that I CANNOT DO JUSTICE, you simply must watch:
I love you, Charlotte!!!!!!! Back on the ferry, she is clearly very drunk and Carrie and Miranda are Not In The Mood. Charlotte talks about how she is smart and pretty and nice and how she’s a catch. Then she declares “I am going to meet the perfect guy and I’m going to get married” and then “I’m getting married this year!!!”. You do you, babe.
Sam is at home with her fireman. They are doing sex. This show really has Kim Cattrall making the funniest sounds.
The next morning over brunch, Charlotte is VERY hungover. Sam wants to talk about the details of the fireman’s cock. Charlotte is over it and Carrie, boring as ever, is like “I agree with Miss Hangover, can we save the cock talk until cocktail time” which is so…...what do you think brunch is FOR? It’s for GOSSIP. They all descend into a conversation about why Fireman are always hot (their words). Carrie says “well there’s a weight limit” (EW!!) and that it’s the hero thing or whatever, and Charlotte says that it’s really because women wanna be saved. She is Fed Up with waiting for her prince charming. She then declares “my hair hurts” and puts her head down onto the table. Carrie posits that they have to be their own white knights which Charlotte declares is depressing. I disagree. Back home, doing her “journalism”, Carrie asks if inside all capable women is a delicate princess and whether they do just want to be saved.
Elsewhere, Miranda is signing some forms at the doctor for her upcoming lasik surgery which it something I think is very weird. She tells the doctor she doesn’t need somebody to look after her and he’s like yeah….that’s not how it works. Cut to her walking with Steve and they’re being cute or whatever—he says the procedure sounds intense and he wants to be there and she’s like yeah I don’t need anybody and he’s like ”I’m not saying you NEED somebody but I want to be there for you” and then she says she asked Carrie and he’s like…but I’m offering? And then she’s like well Carrie is my friend and he’s like, okay so what am I?? What are we even doing here? But then they just start kissing. So there’s no real resolution there except that Steve is an angel.
Carrie is at a bar with Charlotte on the Upper East Side. Charlotte spots a “cute guy” (he is GROSS) and wants to go after him. In the mean time, a weird guy hits on her (who I swear we later see again later as a gossip columnist). The cute guy interrupts this man hitting on them. He punches the annoying guy. He is an investment banker and I think he is so repulsive in every way.
The next day, Carrie is walking home from shopping—in VO she tells us that she reached her credit card limit—and when she gets back to her building John Slattery is on her stoop! He brought voter registration forms and under occupation he put “heartbreaker”. She says “you’re like a Jehovah’s Witness with a good suit”. Which is honestly a great joke. They do flirting. He asks what she bought. Shoes. He says that he can’t stop thinking about her. He invites her to some dinner at some place in Staten Island where he has to do politician schmoozing or whatever. He will pick her up at 7. She declines. He says he will drive by, wait for 5 mins, and there’s no pressure, wear the shoes.
Charlotte is on her Preppy Guy Date. They have a common friend, it turns out. Somebody is leaving the table behind them and accidentally bumps Charlotte’s chair. Preppy Guy ends up punching him. Like I said, he is gross!!!!!!!!!!!! In Vo, Carrie says “and just like that, Charlotte’s white knight turned into a white nightmare” LOL. POETRY.
Steve shows up to escort Miranda home from her surgery. Carrie told him to. He’s putting Miranda into bed and trying to take off her shoes and she goes “No, no rescue” (she is high on valium). She awakes the next morning to see Steve, and in VO Carrie says “for the first time in her life, she saw things clearly” or something like that. Miranda holds Steve’s hand. This means she is finally accepting that they are in love (subtext). I am tired because I know how many fucking times we gotta go through this back-and-forth just to come to the same conclusion which is: Steve deserves better. YEAH I SAID IT!
Sam is meeting Mr. July at the firehouse because he invited her to “hang out” while he was on shift. She arrives expecting a fantasy of Hot Men but it is just a bunch of guys hanging out watching basketball. Duh. Later, she decides to make her own fantasy happen. She slides down the poll and then her and the guy bang against the fire truck. She steps into some gear without a shirt when the fire-bell rings and the guys are like GET OUT OF MY GEAR??? THERE’S A FUCKING FIRE. So she hops out semi-nude and is left in the firehouse loading bay when some strangers walk by. Classic!
Back at Carrie’s, Bill the political guy calls her from downstairs. She’s screening so we hear his plea via the answering machine. He makes some inside jokes from their previous encounters. You get the idea. He drives off. She then calls Miranda to be like, what’s wrong with me why didn’t I just go?? I’m dressed and yet I didn’t go?? And Miranda says some shit about how Carrie got hurt and she’s scared to put herself out there again. This is what Carrie needed to hear. She then rushes out to catch the ferry and meet Mr. Political on Staten Island.
Carrie arrives at the restaurant and he is thrilled to see her. I am so sorry to report that John Slattery charm has always worked on me.1 She says that she is independent and this isn’t a date then says yes it was a bad breakup and she needs to take things slow. When she’s leaving he offers her a ride and she says no she’s good (she’s independent remember) and then he asks if he gets her vote and they start making out in the coat room. He says “you’re so sexy come home with me” and she says “no no kissing is enough for tonight” she rushes off to make sure she makes the last ferry. She arrives to find that in fact she HAS missed the last ferry. One of her shoes falls off. She puts it back on and the camera zooms in, which I can only assume is a symbol for putting on her own glass slipper type thing. Just then John Slattery arrives in his car to offer her a ride. She says that he is taking her home and that’s it. He asks how the get off this island. Carrie directs him (somehow she knows?? I mean I guess she is the only one of The Gals who drives so it kind of tracks? but how much time has she spent on Staten Island?). In VO, she says “sometimes a woman absolutely has to rescue a man. At least that how things end in this Staten Island Ferry tale” GET IT??? It’s word play!!!!!!!
Now THAT’S how you start a season, folks!! Buckle up, season 3 is going to be a glorious ride!!!!